Tempe Noise Takeover 2026: Full lineup and schedule

Sometimes, happy accidents are the best accidents. Just ask local musician E.P. Bradley and his wife and bandmate, Kayla Long, who experienced an unforeseen twist in their favor while planning this year’s Tempe Noise Takeover.

The couple didn’t think the free, two-day DIY music festival, featuring 40-ish local bands playing at Yucca Tap Room, Rocket Space and Time Out Lounge, would ever grow beyond the three-venue format it’s used since debuting in 2023.

Enter Zia Records. Just before Bradley, Long and other festival organizers began picking the Tempe Noise Takeover 2026’s lineup, the local retailer proposed using its Mill Avenue store, located a few doors down from Time Out Lounge, as a potential fourth venue.

It was an offer they couldn’t refuse. And suddenly, the takeover got even noisier.

“We didn’t set out for it to be bigger; it just sort of happened,” Bradley says. “Zia came through out of the fucking blue. I was like, ‘Oh shit, so eight more bands get in this year? Cool.’”

Tempe Noise Takeover 2026 takes place on Friday and Saturday with a weekend of local music on either side of Mill Avenue. By the numbers, it’s quite the sizable affair: 50 local bands performing at four locations over two nights.

It’s also one of the Valley’s few walkable music festivals this fall. Yucca Tap Room and Rocket Space are practically neighbors at Danelle Plaza on the southwest corner of Mill and Southern avenues. Meanwhile, Zia Records and Time Out Lounge are just across the intersection at the Huntington Square shopping center.

The bars host 21-and-over sets, while Zia and Rocket Space are all ages. Admission to each location is free, with donations and proceeds from bar and merch sales benefiting an Arizona charity. This year, it’s the nonprofit Tempe Arts & Music Coalition. Bradley says both aspects have been hallmarks of the festival.

“Tempe Noise Takeover will always be free and will always be charity-based,” Bradley says. “I don’t know how to do it any other way. I don’t know how to do the expensive thing. I think I’d fail at it if I tried. The free thing just makes sense to me.”

About the only thing that does change at Tempe Noise Takeover is the lineup. Organizers book a largely different roster of local bands each year, save for “a couple repeats.”

“And it’s an all-locals thing,” Bradley says. “A lot of them you might know, a lot of them you might’ve never heard before. And we just like it like that.”

‘The local music scene is a lot bigger and better than people think’

When Bradley launched the festival in December 2023 as the Tempe Noise Pop Takeover, the guitarist wanted the event to be both walkable and wide-ranging in its sound.

Three years (and a slight name change) later, Bradley and other organizers have stuck to that goal, while the lineup has grown from 28 bands during its inaugural year to 50 in 2026.

Tempe Noise Takeover was modeled after free DIY music events Bradley helped organize in other cities, like Portland’s Big Ass Boom Box. He admittedly took cues from South by Southwest, including how it gives festivalgoers a chance to discover new music and unfamiliar bands.

“I always found festivals like South by Southwest charming. There’s also something where if it’s free, you get to test drive your local music scene, right?” Bradley says. “A band you’ve never heard of before might not get out of your fucking house for a show in some weird basement, but if it’s surrounded by 50 others, you’ll go check them out. Then they might become your new favorite local band.”

That same philosophy encapsulates Tempe Noise Takeover’s 2026 lineup, which Long described on Instagram as “basically a gigantic mishmash of every genre you could possibly think of.”

That translates to various flavors of rock, like Phoenix surf/garage favorites The Rebel Set and fuzzy psychedelic act Sativan. The lineup also includes emo and shoegaze bands like Marcy’s Letter, Dearest and When We First Met, plus heavier oddities like Bright Sunshine and Redoubt.

Bradley and Long, both formerly of local band Joan of Arkansas, will debut their new skronk rock project, Andre the Average.

Hyphenates and colorfully self-described subgenres also abound. Case in point: “queer blackened post-doom” act Tawwal and the chiptune-adjacent sonic derangement of “goatwave” act Kawaii Robot Shark.

Long-running Phoenix bands are also featured, including folk-punkers The Blood Feud Family Singers, indie synth-pop duo MRCH space-rockers Batter the Drag, and psych-funk klezmer group Jerusafunk.

Bradley says he’s “really stoked” about this year’s Tempe Noise Takeover lineup.

“It’s got legitimately a little bit of everything,” Bradley says. “I’ve enjoyed describing to people what kind of bands that are playing. The fact that I could look at the list and be like, ‘Yeah, we’ve got Muslim hardcore. We’ve got glitch pop. We’ve got 1960s go-go music,’ is really fun.”

Bradley says that even with as many bands as they jammed onto the festival’s 2026 lineup, hundreds more clamored to participate.

“We went through and found what we had over 300 bands submit this year, so it was definitely a crazy experience getting it down to 50. And the quality’s good,” Bradley says. “The Phoenix music scene is a lot bigger and better than people think it is.”

Despite adding more bands and venues this year, Bradley says Tempe Noise Takeover likely won’t get any bigger, especially since fewer than 10 volunteers run the festival.

“Honestly, with the small group of people running this thing, I don’t know if we could sustain like five or six venues. This year, I’m running two of them by myself,” Bradley says. “I think we’re maxed out as this little DIY thing put together by under 10 people do, which is fun. Don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s going to probably remain about the same size from now. Right now, it’s the perfect iteration of what it is.”

Tempe Noise Takeover 2026 Friday lineup and schedule

Yucca Tap Room (21 and over)
29 W. Southern Ave., Tempe

• 7:30 p.m., Old Knives
• 8:15 p.m., Sunthrown
• 9 p.m., Dearest
• 9:45 p.m., Summer Knit
• 10:30 p.m., The Cause of Depression
• 11:15 p.m., Silverface Twin
• Midnight, Acne Superstar

Rocket Space (all ages)
37 W. Southern Ave., Tempe

• 7 p.m., Bryn Ryder
• 7:45 p.m., Tiny STXR
• 8:30 p.m., Gold House
• 9:15 p.m., Marcy’s Letter

Time Out Lounge (21 and over)
3129 S. Mill Ave., Tempe

• 7:30 p.m., DDMNNRS
• 8:15 p.m., Bright Sunshine
• 9 p.m., Super Spreader
• 9:45 p.m., Super Drive
• 10:30 p.m., Sativan
• 11:15 p.m., The Rebel Set

Zia Records (all ages)
3201 S. Mill Ave., Tempe

• 7 p.m., Bay Window
• 7:45 p.m., Lovre
• 8:30 p.m., Luigi Leone and the Turnip Rats
• 9:15 p.m., Keller Frank

Tempe Noise Takeover 2026 Saturday lineup and schedule

Yucca Tap Room (21 and over)
29 W. Southern Ave., Tempe

• 4:00 p.m., Brass Velvet
• 4:45 p.m., Andre the Average Band
• 5:30 p.m., Bigbreakfast
• 6:15 p.m., The Blood Feud Family Singers
• 7 p.m., The Liar’s Handshake
• 7:45 p.m., King Summer
• 8:30 p.m., Batter the Drag
• 9:15 p.m., Bugmaker
• 10 p.m., Mache
• 10:45 p.m., MRCH
• 11:30 p.m., Jerusafunk

Rocket Space (all ages)
37 W. Southern Ave., Tempe

• 4 p.m., Jessi is Tired
• 4:45 p.m., Just Like June
• 5:30 p.m., Tawwal
• 6:15 p.m., Patience
• 7 p.m., Plum
• 7:45 p.m., Saint Judas
• 8:30 p.m., Sympathy Card
• 9:15 p.m., When We First Met

Time Out Lounge (21 and over)
3129 S. Mill Ave., Tempe

• 7:30 p.m., Juice the Sun
• 8:15 p.m., Louis on Tour
• 9 p.m., Winterhaven
• 9:45 p.m., Paralax
• 10:30 p.m., Huemongrel
• 11:15 p.m., Twinstar

Zia Records (all ages)
3201 S. Mill Ave., Tempe

• 7 p.m., Kawaii Robot Shark
• 7:45 p.m., Redoubt
• 8:30 p.m., Smelling Salts
• 9:15 p.m., Tripolar